SUGAR 119 



warmth are available, but these two great divisions 

 account for 99 per cent, of the crop. 



(i) Peninsular India. The Tropic of Cancer crosses 

 India between the mouths of the Ganges and Brahma- 

 putra and that of the Indus; south of this line you have 

 Peninsular India, which is thus wholly within the tropics. 

 Sugar-cane in this region is grown chiefly in Madras, 

 Mysore, and Bombay. With few exceptions thick canes 

 predominate, many of them having been introduced 

 recently by the Agricultural Department; but there are 

 also a number which have been in the country for many 

 years. Some of the latter have undoubtedly degenerated 

 in the course of years, and it is thus more difficult some- 

 times to distinguish them from the local " desi " canes 

 than is the case in North India, especially as the latter are 

 naturally thicker in the south. The yields in the field are 

 often large, not far, indeed, behind those in most sugar- 

 cane growing countries. Occasionally great care is taken 

 in the cultivation, and comparatively heavy doses of 

 manure are given in the form of oil-cake, with very satis- 

 factory results. But, taking the whole region together, it 

 is comparatively unimportant, and the acreage, possibly 

 reaching 250,000, does not constitute one-tenth of that 

 under this crop in India. A little of the cane grown in 

 the Peninsula is manufactured into sugar; a larger 

 quantity is used for chewing in the towns and more 

 populous country districts; while the great bulk is crushed 

 locally in bullock-driven mills and made up into jaggery, 

 an impure, soft-brown sugar, with much glucose and 

 impurities of various kinds, used as food by the people 

 all over the country. 



The growing of sugar-cane in this southern region is 

 limited by the amount of water available and the quantity 

 of paddy grown. The fields are small and isolated, often 

 less than an acre in extent, and the crop is usually planted 

 in rotation with wet paddy that is, rice grown in mud 

 and constantly immersed during the greater part of its 

 life a rotation which always appears to me to be of a 

 very unsatisfactory character. The difficulty of obtaining 

 land in a compact block among a number of small holders 

 is one great bar to any extension, from the factory point 



